To call it a "riot" is
very much a misnomer.What happened in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 31, 1921, and the following days is much more aptly
described as a "race war."

Alarmed by reports that a young
black man who was being held for a possible sexual attack on a white elevator
operator may soon be taken from the Tulsa jail and lynched, armed blacks,
sometimes marching in military formation, made "scattered forays into
white Tulsa."These included two
appearances at the courthouse, the second of which led to a confrontation in
which a gun was fired as a white man attempted to disarm one of the
blacks.At that point, "all hell
broke loose" and people were killed on both sides.When whites scrambled to get guns, breaking
into sporting goods stores and pawnshops to obtain them, the blacks retreated
to Greenwood, the black section of the city, for reinforcements.The battle raged until about 2 a.m. on June
1, and then seemed over.But at dawn a
sniper killed one of the whites gathered in clusters on the outskirts of
Greenwood, and a full-fledged pitched battle ensued.By the time it was over, almost all of
Greenwood had been burned to the ground, and the population driven out.Researchers have found 38 death certificates
(25 for blacks, 13 for whites), but there are allegations that as many as 300
died (or sometimes it is said 300 blacks, ignoring the dead
whites).The dead appear to have been
among the combatants, since there was no effort by either side to kill the
other en masse.

James Hirsch is the author of Hurricane
about the boxer Rubin Carter, and has been a reporter for the New York Times
and Wall Street Journal.Accordingly, he tells the Tulsa story well, with a readable style.Many readers will think there is a semblance,
at least, of journalistic balance.

As with so many things today,
however, polished technique is mixed with much intellectual confusion and
ideological warping.What will appear to
the casual reader as quite a good book on the Tulsa conflict seems something
very different when examined closely.

Hirsch is clearly telling the story
from the perspective of the black activism that has contributed one aspect to
the overall deconstruction of American culture and history that has occurred in
the "culture war" since the 1960s.The events in Tulsa were virtually forgotten (masked by a "culture
of silence," Hirsch says) until a black activist wrote three columns about
them in 1968.Since then, the national
media have been very much alive to the matter, and the issue has followed a
trajectory similar to the one taken by the "Japanese-American
internment" issue: militant articulation from a single point of view; a
willingness on the part of "politically correct" politicians to
accept that point of view; the appointment of a "reparations commission"
heavily stacked on the side of the alleged "victims"; atrociously
biased behavior in conducting the commission hearings; the approval of
palliative measures that are intended to "heal," but that do not;
and, finally, the entry of the whole thing into folklore with a "feel
good" musical that plays fast and loose with the truth.

Hirsch's perspective is part of a
much broader phenomenon that has occurred in the American psyche.Through most of American history, its story
was seen from the point of view of the mainstream society, which was
white.That society took its own
existence for granted and was entirely preoccupied with itself.This changed profoundly, however, beginning
in the middle of the twentieth century.The century-long coalition of an alienated intellectual subculture with
"the worker" gave way to a new coalition in which those who were
alienated against the mainstream society sought allies primarily among
minorities.Over time, this was enhanced
by the flood of Third World immigration and by the feminist movement, which in
its ideology saw women as themselves a "minority" to be
championed.The result: a perspective
that now almost without exception sees American life from the point of view of
the erstwhile outsiders.

The point of view is so much a part
of Hirsch's writing that it seems almost subliminally present, such as when
someone hardly sees the wallpaper in a room.Many readers will be inclined to accept uncritically, for example, a
reference to "Barry Goldwater, who opposed civil rights."When Hirsch accuses a Tulsa newspaper editor
has having held "xenophobic and white supremacist attitudes," citing
the editor's opposition to the annexation of Hawaii, that characterization
won't seem too exceptional today.Why? Because Americans have forgotten how the
annexation of Hawaii was the first issue to raise the question of whether the
United States was to abandon its traditional insularity and embark on an
imperialist path.(Quite soon after the
annexation of Hawaii, the question of empire was raised even more graphically
by the conquest of the Philippines from the Filipinos themselves in a two-year
guerrilla war that continued after the Spanish in Manila had long-since been
defeated.)When Hirsch makes such
references (such as to Goldwater and the editor just mentioned), he reduces
complex and legitimately arguable issues to what is in effect a "sound
bite" that imparts only a selective portion of the truth.

Hirsch's bias is sometimes most
evident in what he passes over without comment.He mentions, for example, a black leader's having been acquitted by a
jury -- but without commenting in the slightest way about whether it was a
white jury and, if so, about what that acquittal implies as a rebuttal to the
"racism" that is otherwise imputed to whites of that day.Most egregiously, Hirsch concludes the book
by recounting, without adverse comment, the plot of a musical, The Song of
Greenwood, that was performed at the new Greenwood Cultural Center on May
31, 2001.The musical seriously
falsifies the events of 1921 by making up a supposed fact that the young black
man who had been held in jail and the elevator operator he was thought to have
assaulted "were lovers"; and, further, that the girl had cried "rape"
and later "admitted that she fabricated the charge."One might think that as a supposedly
objective reporter he would find such a propagandistic stretching intolerable.

Often the bias amounts to a simple
reiteration of now-well-established shibboleths.He says that widespread fear of the rape of
white women by blacks "conflated sexual and racial insecurities among
whites."Further, that "black
success was an intolerable affront to the social order of white supremacy."The first of these shibboleths is the sort of
psychoanalytical nonsense that has been a favored instrument for ad hominem
attacks for at least the past century; and the second is contradicted by much
historical evidence that white society actually welcomed black success.Speaking of lynchings, Hirsch says that they
"were the preferred instrument to crack down on 'uppity' Negroes" --
and adds (as a strange indication of who was considered 'uppity')
"particularly those accused of raping white women."

The ideological perspective is
perhaps to be expected as a given in today's climate.What is not to be so readily anticipated,
though, is an author's failure to delve further into a good many aspects of the
history, especially where doing so would help corroborate or refute a given
version.He quotes a newspaper account
that the young female elevator operator claimed her attacker had scratched her
hands and face and torn her clothes.This would suggest that there was physical evidence to corroborate or
refute her claim that she was attacked.Did she not bear scratches?Were
her clothes not torn?Hirsch lets it go,
never exploring it.

He argues that Tulsa's neglect of
the black community after Greenwood's destruction was as serious an offense as
the destruction itself."The
betrayal of Greenwood after the riot was as great a crime as its
destruction."It is as though
Greenwood's rapid reconstruction "just happened."Within six months, "much of Greenwood's
housing infrastructure had been rebuilt, with 664 frame shacks, 48 brick or
cement buildings, and four frame churches."By 1925, there were few visible signs of the
town's destruction."Despite the
riot," he tells us, "the number of black Tulsans during the decade
increased by 71 percent, to 15,203... By 1926 [just five years after the riot],
Tulsa had more hotels for blacks than were in Harlem."But where were the means obtained not only to
accomplish all of this, but to do so so rapidly?The explanation Hirsch gives is that the
reconstruction was "fueled by dollars earned by domestic servants."It couldn't have been by loans made from
(white-owned) banks, because we are told that "black homeowners were
victimized by having to pay exorbitant mortgage rates, between 10 and 20
percent."All this, however, is
totally incongruous.One cries out, with
radio commentator Paul Harvey, for "the rest of the story."

Hirsch is willing to say that
"blacks who resisted arrest or whose homes had firearms... were the most
likely to be executed."The charge
that there were executions is, of course, of the highest gravity.But he tells nothing of executions: no
witnesses' accounts, no mention in reports; there is, in fact, no other mention
by Hirsch himself.

It would be especially helpful if
Hirsch had delved considerably more than he did into the nature of the
"black nationalism" that arose early in the twentieth century and
that came into violent intersection in Tulsa with the vigilantism that had been
so much a part of American frontier life (though declining as frontier
conditions came to an end) since the Civil War.The militant black leader W. E. B. DuBois had given a speech in Tulsa in
March, just weeks before the "riot."What had he said?Hirsch doesn't
tell us.We are told that the armed
blacks who went to the courthouse marched in military formation.Was this entirely spontaneous, or had they
been in training together as some sort of paramilitary group?We know that DuBois and the magazine of
Greenwood's African Blood Brotherhood praised the armed blacks after the
event.But Hirsch has no curiosity about
the lead-up, if any, to the black side of the conflict.

The result of these omissions and
many others is that the book raises far more questions than it answers.This is certainly not a definitive book on
the subject.